Thursday, January 1, 2009

Starting 09 Right

I, and a number of other obsessed cyclists met this morning for the annual Degree Ride. This has been a traditional local New Year's Day ride for a number of years. A bunch of us meet at a local coffee shop and the distance for the ride is dictated by the temperature when we leave. If it's 0 or 100, we ride a century. Today's ride distance was 25 miles, and gave us a nice paved ride to Granger, Iowa and back. I think we had 25 people show up to take part. 'Cross and road bikes were the dominant choice, but a couple of hybrids and regular MTBs made the ride as well. I was expecting a few others to show up today, but evidently their plans changed, or they came up with some fantastic story about why they didn't make it. I swapped the regular tires back on the SingleCross, which gave me a 39x18 to use on the ride. After three or four miles of head winds, our group turned north. At this point, the geared riders were gone, leaving me to question my decision to stick with the 39 tooth front ring. The ride back was much better, with the quartering wind providing enough resistance to make me work, but not so much that I felt like I was dying. We finished the ride off with a few miles of tailwind on the way back to Starbucks. I had 30 miles for the day, including my ride to and from Starbucks.

This was the first ride after the fit, and it was just about the right length. I did notice some newly located soreness in my legs during and after the ride. Just my body's way of telling me that things have changed some. I have not adjusted the Singlecross's saddle position to match that of my Paramount yet. but I can tell that my legs are putting in a more even effort while I'm riding. I'll take some time tomorrow to raise the saddle on the Singlecross about another 1/4 to 1/2" and get the fore/aft position adjusted and that bike should be set.

I'm hoping to go out for a gravel ride sometime this weekend. Not sure how far, or where yet. Wonder if I should try and sneak a metric in early before my body knows what I'm doing?

While I'm here, I want to congratulate my friend Tom Anderson on finishing his Once-A-Month Gravel Century quest last night around 9 PM. Tom managed to get the last one in with just a few short hours remaining in 2008. Tom was feeling as bad or worse than I did during the first of the century rides we did together clear back in January. I'm happy that he was able to see his goal through to the finish.